Question

The Russian revolution of 1917 wa s a struggle against autocracy. How far do you agree with the statement. Explain?

Answer 1

The Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century was a huge conglomeration of nationalities and ethnic groups covering over 21 million miles from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Baltic and Black seas in the west. With a population of over 178 million people it was overwhelmingly a rural and agrarian society. ‘Eighty per cent of the population was composed of peasants living for the most part in scattered villages with poor communications between them. To the Russian peasant, the village was, for all practical purposes the world.’(1) In 1861 the peasants had been freed from serfdom but the legislation doing so had failed to modernise and develop most of Russian agriculture.